Greedy immunization strategy in weighted scale-free networks

• Published in: Engineering computations Vol. 31; no. 8; pp. 1627 - 1634
• Main Authors: Liu, Zhang-Hui, Chen, Guo-Long, Wang, Ning-Ning, Song, Biao
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bradford Emerald Group Publishing Limited 28.10.2014
• Subjects: Aerospace engineering; Algorithms; Engineering; Greedy algorithms; Immunization; Networks; Optimization; Probability distribution; Spreads; Strategy; Strength; Viruses; Greedy algorithm; Weighted scale-free networks; Immunization strategy; Graph partition; Virus spreading
• ISSN: 0264-4401; 1758-7077
• DOI: 10.1108/EC-11-2012-0285

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present a new immunization strategy for effectively solving the control of the spread of the virus. Design/methodology/approach – Inspired by the idea of network partition, taking two optimization targets which are the scale of sub-network and the sum of the strengths of the sub-network's nodes into account at the same time, a new immunization strategy based on greedy algorithm in the scale-free network is presented. After specifying the number of nodes through the immunization, the network is divided into the scale of sub-network and the sum of the strength of the sub-network's nodes as small as possible. Findings – The experimental results show that the proposed algorithm has the better performance than targeted immunization which is supposed to be highly efficient at present. Originality/value – This paper proposes a new immunization strategy based on greedy algorithm in the scale-free network for effectively solving the control of the spread of the virus.